The Social World

Tag: Health

  • Can you be ‘more MAGA’ than Trump?

    Can you be ‘more MAGA’ than Trump?

    The MAGA crack-up has been the talk of the town this week – thanks to a squishy answer from President Trump on H-1B visas in a Fox News interview, the looming release of all the Epstein documents the House has access to, disagreements over what America’s relationship with Israel should be… and the lingering hangover of the Heritage Foundation’s Tucker Carlson quarrel. (Conveniently, the forthcoming US issue of The Spectator tackles this topic – you can read two pieces from the cover package, by Freddy Gray and Ben Domenech, now.)

    These disputes – about whether there’s such a thing as being “more MAGA than Trump” – are trickling out beyond Washington and into the 2026 primary races. A tipster pointed Cockburn toward two fundraising events over the coming days that illustrate the divide, for the US Senate contest in South Carolina.

    First, the glitzy “Trump Graham Majority Fund Luncheon,” which takes place tomorrow in West Palm Beach. President Trump will make remarks in favor of the incumbent Senator Lindsey Graham – with tickets at an eye-watering $50,000 per person. (The contact for the event is Lisa Spies, whose husband Charlie briefly served as RNC chief counsel in 2024 and had a lengthier tenure working for Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign.)

    Closer to home, there’s a happy hour at Butterworth’s on Monday to raise funds for Paul Dans’s challenge to Graham. Tickets range from a far more modest $50 to $2,500. Dans, readers may recall, served as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 director, leading the initiative from 2022 until 2024. He took the fall after the Trump campaign distanced itself from Project 2025, as its hardline social conservatism offered Team Biden-Harris a convenient foil.

    Speaking of Heritage, rumors are once again swirling about a looming trustee meeting next week to resolve the think tank’s recent woes. But a spokesman assures Cockburn: “There is no board meeting scheduled for next week.”

    You don’t know Dick

    Today marks the tenth day since former vice president Dick Cheney’s passing. Flags around the country are flying at half-staff (in accordance with an Eisenhower-era executive order) – but aside from that, reactions to Cheney’s death have been quite muted in Trump’s Washington.

    The President has not issued a statement about Cheney – or a Truth Social post, for that matter. Compare that to when President Jimmy Carter died 11 months ago, when Trump made two tributes on Truth Social. Cheney’s funeral will take place at the Washington National Cathedral next Thursday – but it is not clear whether President Trump plans to attend, let alone speak. He is not on the Cathedral’s announced list of speakers. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

    On our radar

    DINESH IS SERVED Dinesh D’Souza, author of The End of Racism, has come under fire for his post speculating that Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy could “fix education” for white kids, while “all the professional whiteys on X continue their idle boasting.”

    SWAL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL? Representative Eric Swalwell has been referred to the Department of Justice by the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency following allegations of mortgage and tax fraud.

    GAETZ RATES A troubling report in the New York Times details how the 17-year-old girl who was the subject of a Justice Department sex-trafficking probe and House Ethics Committee investigation into former congressman Matt Gaetz was homeless and had joined a sugar-baby website, while underage, to get money for braces. Gaetz said, “I never had sex with this person.”

    Rock robot rock

    Last August, a group of Silicon Valley power-players, including unofficial Trump advisors Marc Andreessen and Joe Lonsdale, the cofounder of Palantir, launched a super PAC called “Leading the Future” to back AI friendly candidates. The White House is “irked” about this, according to NBC News, because one of the PAC leaders is a former staffer for Chuck Schumer. The White House is usually irked about something, but a staffer, speaking on the record, finds this unusually irksome.

    “Any group run by Schumer acolytes will not have the blessing of the President or his team,” said the official. “Any donors or supporters of this group should think twice about getting on the wrong side of Trumpworld.”

    But perhaps a nonpartisan approach makes sense. The computers that are about to run society care not whether you’re blue or red, donkey or elephant. Such petty mammalian concerns are beneath them. Our Silicon Valley betters established Leading the Future to grease the skids for AI’s arrival, not to play puerile partisan games. Sitting around talking about a “slap in the face” because some foolish person once worked for a political rival is pointless. AI is here to lead the future, not to be borne back ceaselessly into the past. Cockburn, for one, welcomes our new robot overlords.

    Weigh-in at the border

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a “cable” last week instructing US diplomats to consider obesity as a reason to reject foreign visa applications. The cable is an unholy fusion of MAGA nationalism and MAHA weight concerns.

    Obesity, the cable correctly states, leads to all sorts of terrible health problems, which can be a drain on America’s national resources. These would better spent, apparently, on rounding up obese people and sending them back to their country of origin. “Self-sufficiency has been a longstanding principle of U.S. immigration policy,” the cable says, “and the public charge ground of inadmissibility has been a part of our immigration law for more than 100 years.”

    It’s unlikely that immigration officials were turning away obese people at Ellis Island. People used to arrive in this country lean, hungry and ready to push a pickle cart on the Lower East Side. Cockburn nonetheless observes that obesity tends to be more of a problem for people after they arrive in the United States, not before, as they discover the magical qualities of the Sonic value menu. But it’s clear that the State Department has now adopted an immigration policy based on signs that have hung in American frat houses for decades: no fat chicks.

    Subscribe to Cockburn’s Diary on Substack to get it in your inbox on Tuesdays and Fridays.

  • Why weed is the most dangerous drug in America

    Why weed is the most dangerous drug in America

    Weed is the most dangerous drug in America. The main reason for this is the fact that most people don’t think it is. In fact, they typically think just the opposite. They believe not only that pot is safe, but also that it has true medicinal qualities. Little do they know that those benefits are barely worth the paper you wrap your joint in.

    Marijuana is most commonly touted as a balm for anxiety. But it may actually increase anxiety to the point of psychosis – especially for those with underlying psychiatric conditions. Combine it with a diet of daily intake of violent video games and social media – as did Joshua Jahn, the man who shot three victims at a Dallas ICE facility – and you’ve got all the makings of an unstable American. Jahn is only the latest example of this dangerous makeup.

    Weed is also supposed to help you sleep at night, but cannabis gummies, vapes and smoked leaf may actually disrupt sleep patterns. It’s also been praised for pain relief, but in my experience as a physician, it is certainly not effective as a first-line agent.

    Even scarier is the fact that cannabis gummies laced with high amounts of the psychoactive compound tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) are attractively packaged in such a way that young children keep taking them and ending up in the emergency room. This past year alone, more than 22,000 patients were admitted to the ER with THC poisoning, and more than 75 percent of those patients were children and teenagers. Many of them were infants. No doubt many of these came from households where weed is treated as a mostly harmless substance.

    Speaking of infants – pregnant women are taking more cannabis products than ever, often to ease morning sickness in the first trimester. This greatly increases the risk of preterm birth, low-birth-weight infants, developmental problems, and impaired lung function. I have to wonder how many mothers smoking weed during pregnancy are even aware of these risks.

    Besides being more available, today’s cannabis also tends to be far more potent. This isn’t your parents’ Woodstock weed. The typical concentration of THC in widely available products has skyrocketed from 1.5 percent to more than 30 percent. This is resulting in casual users getting hooked at dangerous levels of THC concentration, which increases their appetite for the drug and the amount they need to consume to get high.

    People are broadly aware of the danger of laced fentanyl and opioid overdoses, but marijuana is becoming routinely mixed with other psychoactive substances – the result is a massive increase in the number of deadly ER visits due to the drug. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported 7.59 million drug-related emergency-department visits, a 5.8 percent increase in 2022. The most common cause of this visit was alcohol – cannabis was number two, and opioids three.

    Then there are the long-term risks. Smoking is obviously bad for the lungs. Cannabis use of any kind has been proven to damage the heart and increases the risk of cardiac arrest. And excessive cannabis use leads to cognition problems, poor memory function, and difficulty performing tasks and decision-making.

    There’s a lot we can do to keep the problem from getting worse. There ought to be no rush to make marijuana products easier to come, and there is no reason to change its status as a Schedule I drug, despite pressure to do so. Three criteria must be met for a Schedule I classification: there must be a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use, and a lack of safety associated with the substance. The first of these is clearly met, the second hasn’t been proven, and the third is obvious. There are currently no established safety protocols or guidelines for the drug’s use.

    Many activists want to change the drug to Schedule III, which would remove key regulatory barriers, make the drug easier to access, and formalize its medical uses. What these activists don’t acknowledge is that the expansion of legal use would undoubtedly carry with it an expanded shadow industry. This growing trade would be totally unregulated and would peddle in an increasingly potent form of the product.

    Instead, we need a consistent regulatory standard for the amount of THC that cannabis can legally contain. Across the 40 states that have approved the drug for medical use and the 24 for recreational, there are a massive range of accepted THC levels. This must be standardized at a low level.

    And people must be made aware of just how dangerous the drug is. Ignorance about its dangers combined with its increasing availability, its diverse forms and the strength of the cannabis industry have all combined to create a giant green monster. Until we recognize this beast for what it is, it will continue to stomp across the nation unchecked.

  • By order of the non-doctor

    By order of the non-doctor

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not say, in yesterday’s cabinet meeting, that circumcision causes autism. But the fact that we’d even consider that a real statement shows just how far down the rabbit hole into the MAHA Wonderland of his mind RFK has dragged us. In fact, RFK said that after doctors circumcise boys, they give them too much Tylenol, and that causes autism. President “Don’t Take Tylenol” responded, “there’s a tremendous amount of proof or evidence. I would say as a non-doctor, but I’ve studied this a long time.” 

    A non-doctor is right, and I say this as someone who’s not a fan of male circumcision, a practice based on dated religious superstition. If we abhor female circumcision as a barbaric practice (and we should), then why is male circumcision any different? This is a personal issue for me. My wife didn’t want to circumcise our son more than 20 years ago, but my Jewish parents, now deceased, threatened to disown him, and me, if we didn’t do it. There was no bris. We didn’t enjoy wine and bagels afterwards. A urologist strapped our baby to a board and caused him untold pain, for no reason. I’ll never be able to unhear those screams.  

    Thank you for allowing me to process that trauma. But the point here is that the doctor probably gave our son Tylenol, and our son doesn’t have autism. I’m also circumcised, as are most men I know, or at least I assume they are. We don’t talk about such things. No one ever interviewed me for the studies that RFK cited at the cabinet meeting. “Circumcision leads to autism” is just embarrassing crankery that plays on people’s emotions.  

    Then, on the same day we saw “RFK claims circumcision causes autism” headlines, the Wall Street Journal decided to run a light feature story on RFK’s strange habit of working out wearing jeans. They show photos of him bench-pressing in denim and climbing Phoenix’s Camelback Mountain in denim. I grew up in Phoenix and did that Camelback hike many times. It’s no fun in workout shorts; hiking in jeans is suicide.  

    We live in interesting health times, where the Health Secretary issues a joint “fitness challenge” with the Secretary of War, does a gym circuit wearing Levis, and claims that vaccines and Tylenol cause autism. At least there’s no more Red Dye #12 in our beef tallow Steak and Shake fries. And I have to wonder if this is actually making us healthier, or if we’re just fetishizing the lifestyle eccentricities of a wealthy bulked-up falconer from America’s most famous political family.  

    This movement is starting to feel like a mirror image of the “more doctors smoke Camels” ads that the tobacco industry used to produce. In 1930, Lucky Strike said that “20,679 Physicians say ‘LUCKIES are less irritating” because of a “toasting” process. Millions of people died because of those campaigns. 

    It’s a long way down the path from that to MAHA claiming that sugar is poison (true) and that brief morning exposure to sunlight helps regulate our circadian rhythms (also true). So let’s bring it all together and list my true prescription for a healthy life: eat moderately, exercise often but not excessively, don’t smoke, don’t get circumcised, DON’T TAKE TYLENOL, and, for god’s sake, don’t climb a mountain in jeans.  

  • We should treat veterans with psychedelics

    We should treat veterans with psychedelics

    “Shit starts to get real, real quick,” recalled former US Marine Tyler Flanigan. An Iraqi sniper had just shot out the tires of his truck, and a key member of his team had been killed. “We were like sitting ducks,” he remembers. “There wasn’t a single day in Iraq when I wasn’t shot at or didn’t have something explode next to me,” says his fellow Marine veteran, Nigel McCourry. Combat experience is hard to forget.

    Like a Proustian madeleine, life offers daily triggers that throw them back to a world of nerve-jangling journeys down “IED alley,” the flailing feeling of in a conflict and then the horror of having to gather the body parts of your friends and put them into bags. These former US Marines very bravely discussed their difficulties with processing their trauma in the moving documentary short Dead Dog on the Left. It chronicles their journey through the no-man’s-land of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or C-PTSD, which in turn triggered alcoholism and suicidal thoughts, to recovery aided by MDMA-led psychotherapy.

    Psychedelic therapy doesn’t simply suppress symptoms. It may help reshape the system generating them

    Their stories are not unusual. For the past eight years I have been the patron of a small charity called Supporting Wounded Veterans, which helps veterans who have suffered life-changing injuries. Increasingly though, our work is less to do with physical injury and more to do with mental injury, C-PTSD does not necessarily arise until sometime after the trauma. We are the only UK charity conducting medical research with trials using MDMA-led therapy, first at King’s College London and now in Cambridge.

    When I was chief of the general staff, the professional head of the British Army, eight years ago, we recognized that while we had an excellent focus on physical health, we were not doing enough for mental health. So we introduced training for commanders at all levels and developed a mental-first-aid assessment. But most importantly we worked to change the culture. We wanted to make it acceptable for soldiers to talk about mental health and to have the confidence to ask for help, secure in the knowledge that it wouldn’t be seen as a weakness. Recently, I took three weeks off and traveled to a retreat to try to understand the effect that multiple year-long combat tours in Afghanistan have had on my own mental well-being. It was an extraordinary experience to bring my feelings out of their sealed box and to begin to understand the impact of the conflicts. I am fortunate. My issues are entirely manageable – but imagine what it is like for those who suffer with complex PTSD.

    The guilt of surviving when others have died. Living in a society that does not want to know what you saw, and seems not to care, leaving you feeling betrayed. Losing your sense of purpose and belonging. And the desperation that comes from not being able to find a treatment that works. It should be alarming for all of us that suicide rates in young veterans are two to four times higher than for the rest of the population. Hence my purpose in writing this article – for there is a treatment that potentially works if only our government would get behind it.

    At the risk of sounding “woo-woo,” I am talking about psychedelic therapy. It is not new. Between the 1950s and 1970s, LSD, MDMA and psilocybin were used in psychiatric clinics across Europe and North America to treat alcoholism, trauma and end-of-life anxiety. Tens of thousands of patients received care before prohibition abruptly ended the work. The methods were sub-par by modern standards, but one insight endured: these compounds seemed to activate the mind, not just medicate it. Patients described experiences that were vivid, challenging and often profound, and outcomes improved when those experiences were supported before and after with specialized care.

    We now have MDMA-led therapy, currently the most rigorously studied psychedelic intervention for C-PTSD. MDMA doesn’t produce hallucinations. Instead, it reduces activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain where fear-based emotions are processed, allowing patients to revisit trauma without being overwhelmed. Psychedelic therapy doesn’t simply suppress symptoms. It may help reshape the system generating them. Neuroscientists now speak of a “window of plasticity” – a brief period in which the brain becomes more responsive, flexible and open to learning. It’s not alchemy. It’s structured, supervised psychological work.

    Phase three trials in the US and earlier studies in Australia, Canada and Israel have shown sustained reductions in symptoms. But sadly, despite the FDA designating MDMA-assisted treatment as a “breakthrough therapy,” there is still no formal approval. Even so, momentum continues. In March, the US Department of Defense awarded $9.8 million in grants for MDMA research, including studies with active-duty troops. Regrettably, the UK is not keeping up. Though MDMA and psilocybin show promise in trials, both remain Schedule 1 substances in Britain, labeled as having “no medical use.” That legal status triggers licensing hurdles, a regulatory burden and huge additional costs.

    America is investing in healing her warriors while the UK hesitates. Ministers cite regulation, but the deeper issue is a lack of commitment to collaborative research, to therapeutic innovation and to serious investment in mental health care.

    I believe Britain doesn’t need to wait for the US to license this treatment. It should recategorize MDMA for research purposes to enable trials to happen more quickly and at a vastly reduced cost. If these trials are as successful as the ones we have seen so far, then the government and the Medicine and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency need to allow full licensing – and at pace. This is a moral obligation to those who serve our country.

    The Byzantine emperor Maurice had it right when he said: “The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten.” All these years later, his warning still feels painfully relevant.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 29, 2025 World edition.

  • Is Trump right to link autism with Tylenol?

    Is Trump right to link autism with Tylenol?

    Donald Trump’s apparent suggestion that people could protect themselves against Covid by injecting themselves with bleach marked a low point in his first administration. It provided his critics with evidence that he was an erratic president trying to ride roughshod over scientific evidence as well as common sense. It is easy, therefore, to dismiss the American president’s announcement that government health warnings will henceforth be printed on packets of Tylenol – the brand name for acetaminophen – telling pregnant women to avoid the painkiller for fear it will cause autism in their unborn children as yet another anti-scientific diatribe.

    The involvement of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a long-term vaccine skeptic – adds to the impression that the association between autism and acetaminophen might be a little cooked-up. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists lost no time in branding the presidential announcement as “irresponsible.”

    But is there any genuine link between autism and the consumption of Tylenol? There is quite a lot of evidence on this and interestingly, it doesn’t entirely dismiss a link, although if there is one, it does not appear to be very strong.

    A review of the evidence was published in the journal Environmental Health in August – carried out by a team of scientists from several universities, including Harvard and the University of California. It looked at 46 studies, 27 of which found a link between acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental disorders in children (not just autism but also attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, ADHD). Of the others, nine found a null link and four found a negative association – i.e., suggesting that acetaminophen could actually lower the risk of neurodevelopment disorders. It didn’t classify the remainder of the studies into either of those groups. Pointedly, however, the review suggested that the higher-quality studies were more likely to show a positive association between acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental disorders.

    But how big is the link? One of the most comprehensive studies on this subject uses data on 2.5 million Swedish children born between 1995 and 2019. It found that 1.42 percent of children whose mothers had taken acetaminophen during pregnancy went on to develop autism, compared with 1.33 percent of children whose mothers didn’t take the painkiller. There are other things to consider behind this rather weak association – mothers who took acetaminophen were quite likely to have been in worse general health than those who did not, so their acetaminophen use is surely not the only thing going on here.    

    Yesterday’s announcement is not purely some off-the-cuff move by Trump – it is backed by Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health (whose background is nevertheless in economics rather than medicine). He was one of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, which called for young people less at risk of Covid to be allowed to get on with their lives during the pandemic.

    While evidence for any link between Tylenol and autism is certainly not strong, it is not unreasonable to ask whether pregnant women – and many other people, for that matter – should try to avoid taking Tylenol if they can. Taking medical drugs is often a trade-off between risk and reward, and while the risks in this case might not be great, nor, in many cases, will be the rewards.

    A lot of people are taking painkillers far too routinely without considering that pain is there for a reason: it is telling you not to put too much weight on that injured ankle or warning you that there might be some serious problem in your stomach. Kill the pain and you kill the warning with it.       

    The presentation of the Trump administration’s policy, however, is dreadful. Trump’s assertion that the Amish community don’t have autism because they don’t take painkillers does seem a little dubious, as does RFK Jr.’s claim that there aren’t many 70-year-olds with full-blown autism. The diagnosis of autism has certainly increased dramatically in recent decades but it seems to me to be strongly related to it being a fashionable diagnosis. There are plenty of 70-year-olds living in institutions who were never diagnosed with autism when they were young but who would be now.    

  • Is ‘carbon butter’ really good for us?

    Is ‘carbon butter’ really good for us?

    All butter is made from carbon, but not all butter is carbon butter. This is the name being given to a new environmentally friendly, 100 percent ethical lab-made food product. There’s not an udder, churn or milkmaid in sight.

    Carbon butter is yet another one of those foods of the future we’re told about, with wide-eyed, breathless enthusiasm, that will transform the way we eat as well as our health, save the planet and make sure there are enough calories to go round when the world hits a population of 10 billion, at some point in the next decade or two.

    A few years ago, it was cockroach milk – four times more nutritious than cow’s milk, said Bloomberg, excitedly – plant-based meat and “cultured oil.” Now, it’s the turn of carbon butter.

    Carbon butter is the brainchild of the Bill Gates-backed food-tech company Savor. It’s made by passing carbon dioxide, green hydrogen and methane over a metal catalyst to produce a soft, semi-solid fat – butter, or so the people at Savor would have you believe, anyway.

    One thing Savor won’t tell you is that carbon-butter has a colorful past. The company’s eyes are fixed on tomorrow

    According to a recent puff piece in the Carbon Herald, “This revolutionary product aims to answer the growing need for a sustainable food chain solution that offers a reliable alternative to agriculture-dependent oils.” This is about saving the planet. And, of course, you’re supposed to marvel at the fact that two of the very gases that are “killing” planet Earth – carbon dioxide and methane – are being used to make “this revolutionary new product.”

    Savor operates a 25,000 square foot facility in Batavia, Illinois. It already produces a number of different artificial fats, including alternatives to palm oil, milk fat and cocoa butter, all using a range of “methane- and carbon-based inputs.”

    Savor’s first production run took place last year and the company is aiming to produce 100 kilograms a week of artificial fat before scaling up to become a full commercial facility. The Carbon Herald points to a “strong interest and demand for more of these alternative goods,” claiming that “many Michelin-star restaurants and leading figures from the food industry” have welcomed the product with open arms.

    One thing Savor definitely won’t tell you is that carbon butter has a long, colorful past. The company’s eyes are fixed firmly on tomorrow. With good reason.

    The first ever carbon butter was called coal-butter, because – you guessed it – it was made from coal. Coal-butter was developed in the 1930s when Nazi Germany was looking for ways to guarantee its access to key resources before World War Two.

    Most important was oil. Germany is blessed with huge coal reserves, but little oil. German industry and the Wehrmacht would need oceans of the stuff when war came. German scientists set about finding a way to produce synthetic oil from coal, since both are forms of carbon. Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch eventually came up with a solution, which involved lobbing steam and oxygen at coal to break it apart into carbon dioxide and hydrogen; these were then passed over a metal catalyst, yielding liquid fuel.

    Fischer and Tropsch, though they didn’t know it at the time, had actually killed two birds with one stone. Germany had a fat problem too, and this new method could be used to address that as well.

    The German appetite for fat was massive – some 1.5 million tons a year by the mid-1930s – but only half of that demand could be met using domestic sources. Linseed oil from South America, soybeans from Asia and whale blubber from the Arctic were all necessary – and all were vulnerable to naval blockade.

    A chemist called Arthur Imhausen realized that all you needed to do was add glycerin to the paraffin-like residue of the Fischer-Tropsch process and you’d have an edible fat – at least theoretically. He partnered with chemical giant IG Farben (which would later manufacture Zyklon-B) and began to make quantities of Speisefett, the world’s first synthetic edible fat.

    Speisefett wasn’t very appetizing – white, waxy and tasteless – so Imhausen added diacetyl, a flavoring now used in microwavable popcorn, and salt, and then he added some beta-carotene to make the fat look yellowy, like real butter.

    Exit Speisefett, enter “coal-butter.” The Nazi leadership was over the moon and the Führer himself gave an official dispensation to disregard Imhausen’s Jewish heritage. He was now a “full Aryan,” and just in time. But there was still the matter of coal-butter’s safety. Since the plan was to use it in military rations, it had to be fit for those fighting.

    This is where the story gets darker – much darker. The Nazis had a ready supply of human guinea pigs in their growing network of concentration camps, and that’s exactly where they looked to do their testing. Around 6,000 inmates at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp were fed coal-butter and monitored closely. A scientific paper published in 1943 triumphantly reported that “thousands of tests… confirmed the high value of synthetic cooking fat and made it the first synthetic food in the world to be approved for human consumption.” Of course, there was no mention of where the “thousands of tests” had been conducted – or on whom.

    You might reasonably object, after hearing this strange little story, that it has nothing to do with the value of carbon butter as a food in 2025. You’d be right about the logical use of the reductio ad Hitlerum, of course, but actually, this story does have some bearing on whether or not we should eat the stuff today.

    As with pretty much all these ‘foods of the future’ we simply don’t know what long-term consumption will do to us

    After the war, British intelligence got hold of documents that suggested the Nazi scientists had been extremely selective in their choice of data to prove the safety of coal-butter. When animals had been given it, the effects were alarming. Long-term consumption caused severe kidney problems and even stripped the bones of calcium. Dogs refused to eat it.

    In the final months of World War Two, coal-butter was given to U-boat sailors, but they had an average life expectancy of 60 days – far too short to garner anything about its effects – and they were miles underwater. Poor sods.

    In truth, as with pretty much all these so-called “foods of the future,” we simply don’t know what long-term consumption will do to us. Humans have no history of eating fat made from gases passed over a metal plate, drinking “milk” made from ground-up cockroaches or eating endlessly replicating meat cells grown in a stainless-steel bioreactor (that’s what lab-grown meat is by the way, and it’s also how cancers behave).

    Many of these foods have already been approved for human consumption by the FDA and the bar for licensing still remains dangerously low. The companies that make these products supply their own safety data, for heaven’s sake. Something smells pretty rancid to me, and it’s not the butter. Sorry – “butter.”

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 29, 2025 World edition.

  • Inside the cult of Equinox

    Inside the cult of Equinox

    Scratch the surface of Silver Age Rome and what do you find? Most likely, a tight subterranean vault built as a meeting room for the followers of Mithras. This Persian mystery cult was everywhere in the early Anni Domini, coming to prominence between the decline of Hellenism and the rise of Christianity, filling that gap between the gods of Olympus and the God of Moses. The cult’s dark temples, the Mithraea, squeezed devotees into opposing benches designed to make them uncomfortable, all while in communion with their fellow initiates. Today, sociologists might call a Mithraeum a “third place.” Here was the kind of space where Roman men who had become disillusioned with Jupiter Stator could go between work and home to be purified together in a shower of bull’s blood.

    The modern gym is one of our own ubiquitous third places, but only the urban fitness chain known as Equinox has positioned itself as an upscale mystery cult. “COMMIT TO SOMETHING,” beckons the gnostic advertising campaign of this self-described “high-performance lifestyle leader.” When presented with the accompanying outsize images obstructing the gym’s windows, we might well wonder: commit to what?

    In truth, the ‘something’ to which one mainly commits at Equinox is a mid-four-figure annual fee

    Launched in 1991, the gym now has more than 100 outposts spread across New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Houston and Washington, DC, as well as London, Toronto and Vancouver. The Equinox campaign started by the ad agency Wieden+Kennedy in 2016, diverged notably from the standard gym appeal of “improving lives through fitness” or “member-friendly memberships that won’t break the bank,” as the bargain-basement New York Sports Club might say. First shot by Steven Klein – whom the New Yorker described as creating “fashion photography with a pistol and a pulse” for his images that “teetered between the seductive and the sadistic” – the Equinox campaign was far from mens sana in corpore sano. It wasn’t even about going to the gym at all.

    Instead, we saw a model etching a tattoo over what remained of her preemptive double mastectomy. “Scars aren’t ugly,” she said in the video component. “Scars are really just beautiful badges reminding you what you chose to go against; not just the size of your opponent but the size of your commitment.” Other materials presented a young man with a paralyzing stutter. “Your commitment tells your story better than you ever could,” he eked out. In another, three deaf cheerleaders signed in unison. In another, a model cut her hands practicing the harp as blood ran down her instrument. In another, a naked man received a haircut and manicure-pedicure as a small mirror covered his pudendum. In another, a woman breastfed two babies at her table at a restaurant. In yet another, a shirtless man was soon covered in bees.

    At the time, Equinox promoted its campaign as an “intimate, provocative and deeply moving exploration of personal identity” that “confronts current cultural issues and asserts that commitment has the power to define who we are in the deepest sense.”

    This year, Equinox updated the approach with a shoot by the British fashion photographer Charlotte Wales that extended these themes: a model licks a leather boot; a woman lies on a bed of nails as a robotic arm sticks her with a hypodermic needle; another model (this time transsexual) walks side by side with an AI version of their likeness covered in metallic parts. “Commitment is obsessed,” reads Equinox’s latest ad copy. “It’s now. It’s relentless. Always one step ahead. Abandon half-measures. Surrender to your urges. Sacrifice for obsession. Commitment isn’t a choice. It’s an awakening. Let desire drive you. Commit to something.”

    Abandon all hope, ye who enter here? To hammer home the infernal message, Equinox throws extra shade on those who make that naive New Year’s resolution to get in shape. “If you waited for the ball to drop, you dropped the ball,” advises the gym. “On January 1, we blocked new membership sign-ups. Because commitment doesn’t start when the calendar resets. It’s for those who are all in. Not when the ball drops, the clock strikes, or the calendar flips – but always.”

    So what if you can’t commit to the gym, the message goes. You should really be committed to an intensive-care unit. Or a mental asylum. Or you should receive a felony charge. But in truth, the “something” to which one mainly commits at Equinox is a mid-four-figure annual fee.

    The real mystery of Equinox is what you get for the expense. In June, New York attorney general Letitia James won a $600,000 judgment against the company by arguing that its contractual agreements were too hard to break. The award of a mere $250 to each of the plaintiffs – which equaled less than a month of dues, to say nothing of the initiation fee – left members less than impressed. “Tish gets ripped!” ran the New York Post headline. “New Yorkers not impressed with AG Letitia James’s crackdown on gyms.”

    Members don’t converse. Most employ monastic silence as they move from station to station

    Equinox positions its membership as fast-track admission to the cosmopolitan faith. At the root of such modern urbanism, of course, is masochism. High taxes, crowded subways and filthy streets appeal to the broken-window theory in reverse: that our souls will only get better if our city lives get worse. Professional sadists such as New York’s Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani therefore thrive in the same way as that Equinox spin instructor who comes around to crank up your bike’s resistance. It’s all about abnegating the flesh and globalizing the intifada to a techno beat. In one early Equinox advertisement, a screaming, shirtless woman holds up her fist in front of a classical building surrounded by a night-time security detail. Just what she is protesting does not matter so much as the appearance of her consequence-free LARPing. (She is portrayed by the fitness model Bianca Van Damme, daughter of the “muscles from Brussels” Jean-Claude Van Damme.)

    Equinox members may not be true basement-dwelling “Brooklynites for Gaza,” but they are content to go along with the latest thing as long as the towels are stocked and the steam room stays open. We all signed up to be in this Paul Verhoeven-movie of a place, and that’s life in the big city.

    “A manic attempt to make the posthuman sexy,” is how one agnostic member explained it to me. “I have the distressing sense that I am beholding another stripe – or, heaven forbid, chevron – on the ghastly and vexillologically metastasizing ‘progress flag.’ The clientele strikes me as being finance and finance-adjacent bros plus gay men for whom human growth hormone, rather than Ozempic, is still the lifestyle supplement of choice. As for the women, I’d have no idea. I don’t notice.”

    Not noticing is a big part of the Equinox culture. Members don’t converse. Most employ monastic silence as they move from station to station, carrying their water bottles and iPhones upon which a small dog must be featured on the lock screen. No grunts. Little sweat. The chilled eucalyptus towels see to that. After reports a decade ago of problems in the steam room, the facility posted signs of a “zero-tolerance policy regarding inappropriate, sexual or lewd behavior. Our staff is on notice.” The closest most come to catching a sexually transmitted disease at today’s Equinox is when a form of athlete’s foot requires an oral course of fungicide (I now wear shower shoes).

    And yet, past the many cult symbols that line its entry, Equinox tends to be well-maintained and almost always uncrowded. Bottles of four different soaps and lotions line each shower stall: a shampoo and conditioner of rose, pepper and sage; a facial cleanser of aloe, geranium and rose; a body cleanser of chamomile, bergamot and rose. Additional bottles of face and body cream are available in the locker rooms. So too are Q-Tips, deodorant, mouthwash, razors, even a container of black hair ties to maintain one’s man bun. The only recent controversy here occurred a year ago, when Equinox switched out its Kiehl’s line of products for Grown Alchemist, a brand that can also be purchased at (gasp) Target.

    My Equinox membership grants me access to all the spin classes and boxing sessions my heart desires. There is a mobile media library showing the proper use of every exercise machine – something I found particularly useful as I recovered from a suite of orthopedic setbacks. With my level of membership, I can visit the Flatiron location across from my office, the Upper West Side location next to my apartment, the Columbus Circle location with the saltwater pool and just about every other location save for the nirvana that is the new Equinox Hudson Yards, which would cost me another $50 a month. Perhaps one day I too will join this “most spacious, thoughtful, and connected Equinox ever… the purest expression of high-performance living yet. The 60,000-square-foot luxury destination spans two floors and includes a 15,000-square-foot pool and sundeck.”

    Even Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been spotted in his Make America Healthy Again jeans and hiking boots, lifting at Equinox. At some point we all reach that moment in life when we realize our aging frames must be committed to a daily routine of physical therapy.

    By spending more than $300 a month with a company that advertises personal destruction, many urban professionals may feel they have purchased some progressive blessing on their self-care. For others such as myself, Equinox is simply a very nice gym.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 15, 2025 World edition.

  • Why I am never doing the ‘Pete & Bobby Challenge’

    Why I am never doing the ‘Pete & Bobby Challenge’

    A terrifying thing appeared on my Twitter feed this morning. Secretary of Health and Human Services and bear-fighter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he’s “teamed up” with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the “Pete & Bobby Challenge.” This, unfortunately, is a fitness challenge. Even more unfortunately, it involves doing 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups. Most unfortunately of all, they want us to do it all in five minutes or less.

    You might take heart that in the gym-based, sweat-soaked motivational video that accompanies the Tweet, RFK Jr. takes a whole five minutes and 25 seconds to complete this challenge. However, keep in mind that he’s in his seventies, and does the entire challenge in jeans. SecDef Pete, who, if he’s an alcoholic, is the healthiest alcoholic who’s ever lived, completes the under-five-minutes no problem, doing pull-ups like he’s God playing games with dice.

    The odds that I’m going to do this challenge are equal to the odds that I’ll take up needlepoint, start liking mayonnaise, or watch an episode of Virgin River: Zero. I’m all for health and fitness, but this version of Bowflex America isn’t for me. My US passport doesn’t mean I need to crawl through mud like a Marine. I’m the one the Marines are supposed to be defending.

    I preferred a previous generation’s fitness plan: Michelle Obama’s program of growing your vegetables and engaging in some peppy light multicultural Sesame Street dancing. I mean, I didn’t do that, either; I had a reputation as America’s coolest dad to protect. But it was more accessible than RFK’s roided-out brotastic exercise nightmare.

    It’s a matter of exercise perspective. I don’t treat my life like a high-intensity interval. I treat my body like I treat my barbecue: low and slow, with the occasional wet rub. The latter part means I enjoy a good schvitz. Get your mind out of the sewer.

    My fitness program is this: 30 to 45 minutes of low-to-moderate intensity yoga at least five teams a week, and at least a half hour of at least semi-brisk walking a day. And I don’t eat every meal like someone just dumped a barrel of fried chicken tenders into a trough. It might not seem like a lot, and I don’t exactly look imposing, but when I have to duck under a rope in airport security, walk up four flights of stairs, or hump for miles around Chicago with a 30-pound suitcase on my back (which happened last weekend, for reasons that I’ll tell you at dreary length if I see you sometime), I can do it without collapsing.

    I’m all for a renewed Presidential Fitness challenge, and can get behind the MAHA healthy eating program. But I reject this idea of treating life as though it were Basic Training that we must complete every day. The goal should be to get through your routine with minimal stress and strain. They call it Functional Fitness, and unless you are an Olympian, a professional surfer, (or, apparently, a Cabinet member), it’s all you need.

    I treat every day of my life like I’m recovering from a medium-intensity injury or a mild illness. Sure enough, it helps prevent medium intensity injuries and mild illness. I can hold a five-minute plank without even trying, but it’s not because I’m jacked. It’s because I do light, boring, mild exercise every day. My abs aren’t a six-pack, but a solid pony keg in the middle will do the job as well.

    Whose fitness example would you follow: RFK Jr. and SecDef Pete, who look like they’re training to defend Thermopylae against the armies of Xerxes, or President Trump? That man is 79 years old, and his fitness routine involves a weekend round of golf and furious midnight thumb-typing. You can do it, America. It’s an achievable goal.